Announcement by Finance, Health Ministries comes as Histadrut chief Eini calls on PM to intervene to end 8-day nurses strike.

Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to
intervene in the nursing labor crisis, which has forced sanctions and limited
services on the public health system over the past eight days.

However,
minutes after Eini spoke, the Finance and Health Ministries and Clalit Health
Services said that on Tuesday morning, they will ask the Tel Aviv Regional Labor
Court for restraining orders against the nurses – to prevent them from
instituting further sanctions or abandoning their workplaces
entirely.

The ministries claimed that the nurses had failed to hold
“genuine negotiations and seriously discuss proposals raised by the Treasury”
despite growing harm to the public. The government maintains that the nurses are
bound to work normally until the expiration of their labor contract at the end
of this month.

The economy is in a period of “uncertainty” the statement
said, “due to the slowing in growth, negative developments in the world economy
and extreme uncertainty in the Euro bloc.”

In addition, the statement
continued, the fact that there is no approved national budget before the
elections makes it more difficult to sign a wage contract: “The next government
is the one that decides priorities and economic policy.”

The sanctions
have resulted in minimal Shabbat schedules in public hospitals and in community
health fund clinics, as well as well-baby clinics and Health Ministry
installations.

Eini said at the Israel Business Conference on Monday
night that he raised the issue of nurses’ salaries and inadequate manpower with
Netanyahu some time ago and that “he understood their distress.” Last March,
Eini and his labor federation colleagues prepared a formula to start
negotiations in September so as not to violate the framework of pay for public
workers. But September arrived and nothing was done, he added.

He warned
that members of the Israel Nurses Association, headed by Ilana Cohen, may
abandon the hospitals because they feel they have “nothing to lose. I call on
the prime minister to come and sit down and give the nursing profession the
recognition it deserves.”

The Histadrut chairman said the nurses’ working
conditions are insufferable and that 2,000 more professionals are needed in the
profession every year, but the nursing schools produce only 1,000 new
graduates.

“I see nurses as angels,” said Eini. “In the 1990s, new
immigrant nurses from the former Soviet Union filled the ranks, but now this is
finished. Any person who has been hospitalized understands that this profession
is a mission.”

Both the Treasury and the nurses issued statistics on
average wages, which were very different, depending who supplied them. Nurses
demonstrated during the day outside hospitals to protest the way the government
has been treating them in wage talks.